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Monday, 8 February 2016

The Marmalade Dilemma

It's marmalade time. Bodrum is full of citrus stalls which were a constant reminder that our cupboards were bare of preserves and that stocks needed to be renewed. But making marmalade creates a lot of steam so should ideally be done on a warm day when all the windows can be left open. This year so far, warm sunny days have been in short supply so the minute the temperature rises I want to be out walking not cooking. Inevitably the job was done on a cold wet day and the house got an extra dose of humid air that it could have done without. My orange seller was so pleased that I wanted turunç, sour seville oranges, rather than sweet ones, that he threw in 2 kilos free and I was forced to make double quantities this year, So many golden jars twinkling at us from the shelf have proved too tempting as we've already got through 3. I may have to have another boil up later this month.

I'm a great believer in the right tools for the right job and having a maslin pan, thermometer and metal funnel saves a lot of faffing around with scales and measuring jugs.

My recipe is simple: 15 sour oranges, 2 lemons, 3kg sugar.

I scrub the fruit well in case they have been sprayed with pesticides and put them in the pan with 4 litres of water. This is boiled for 2 hours and left to get cool. I usually do this the night before.
I then scoop out the dimpled fruit into a bowl leaving the water in the pan and have another large bowl with a sieve on top near at hand.
I cut each fruit in half and use a spoon to scoop out the pips, flesh and pith into the sieve. With a pair of scissors I snip the remaining translucent peel into the maslin pan of water, which is full of orange flavour from the 2 hours of boiling.
Put the pan back on the heat to boil and scoop as many pips as you can from the sieve and tie them in a muslin square and pop it into the boiling water. Pour the liquid from the bowl under the sieve back into the boiling pan. Boil until you have 3 litres in your pan (see why the preserving pan with litre marks on the inside is so useful).
Take out the muslin square then add the 3 kilos of sugar and stir until dissolved and using your thermometer, boil until the mixture reaches 120 C/220F. I find that 30 minutes at this temperature is enough to make it set, but test on a cold plate before you pour it into jars. I wash my jars and put them into a cold oven and bring it up to just under100C for 10 minutes and pour the hot but not boiling marmalade into the hot jars to avoid cracking. Oven gloves or asbestos fingers are mandatory for the bottling.

After years of no Sevilles in our part of France I now have a tree of my own....I soak mine overnight before boiling but otherwise it sounds similar.Much in use for Dundee tart...half marmalade half golden syrup otherwise ordinary treacle tart recipe...and to use when making breadand butter pudding

I've been collecting jars to make my own marmalade ... big plans this year to make it. But our kitchen is so small and not functional at all, I'll just have to live vicariously through you this near - maybe next year! But at least I have a recipe now!

B to B, Well, although I have made jam in the past, I had to Google maslin pot to find out what it was! (Actually, it looked like a great pot to make soup in, too.) Thanks for the info. I love marmalade and it looks like if I ever get around to it, jars would make great gifts at holiday time. Thanks for the lesson.

I make a lot of jam with my maslin pan, but it's years since I made marmalade. The Séville orange season is so short over here that it can be hard to find them in the shops. How lovely to have them available in such profusion.

About Me

In early 1982 I boarded a Turkish Kibris flight to Izmir - my destination was a 29 foot sloop in Bodrum's new marina. At 22, my belongings fitted into a worse for wear sailing holdall. In 2012 I made a similar journey from Heathrow to Bodrum. Thirty years have passed and Bodrum has changed. There are plenty of very good blogs detailing the ex-pat journey through modern Turkey. The aim of this one is to catch sight of past Turkey through my experience of re-settling in modern Bodrum.